There are 5 must-haves for every professional looking website. Seasoned web users will expect these standard elements, and you cannot expect visitors to stick around if even one of these is missing.

Consistent look & feel: This is the basic mantra of web design. When a user arrives at your site, they expect to see a consistent design throughout in terms of colors, fonts and general look and feel. If your website follows a different visual scheme on every page, it will look like a patchwork of pages, rather than one cohesive site. This immediately creates an image of un-professionalism in the minds of your potential customers, apart from being visually jarring. We recommend that you use one font throughout for headings and maybe two fonts for the text. Two primary colors work best with a third as a secondary color. Use a shade of one of the two primary colors for the secondary color. By adopting these fundamentals, you will ensure a unified, dependable and harmonious design.

Consistent navigation: The links on your website should be in the same place on all the pages. Do not make it unnecessarily difficult for your visitors. It is annoying to users, and gives the impression once again that you and your company are inconsistent and amateurish. Don't make users work harder than they have to, to get information from your site. Always provide a way for a user to get back to your home page from every page of your site. Often, this is the page that is most familiar to any user and that is where they would instinctively like to return should they not find what they need immediately. If someone lands on a subsidiary page on your site from a search engine or through another site, don’t you want to provide a way for that new user to get to your home page?

Provide a search function: This is another standard feature that is expected by most people. If there is a specific bit of information that a person wants to find, don't make him wade through every page of your site. Implementing a search function is easy and free.

Balance text and graphics: Avoid cluttering up your page with too many graphics. Remember, graphic-intensive sites take longer to load. Strike a good balance between essential content and bells and whistles.

Include phone number, logo, and tag line: Every page should have your phone number and contact details listed on it. It can be very frustrating to go to a company's site and have no way to reach them except through a form or email. This could potentially turn off your customers. Including your logo and tag line on every page will serve as a constant reminder to your customers of what the site is all about.

Make sure every page of your site incorporates these top five elements; they are a necessary foundation for any effective website. The best way to do this would be to create an html template with these 5 elements which can then be used for all the pages in your site. Templates make it easy to include all of these and facilitate updates as well.